


Sunrise, Sunset

by ailyn_moreau



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, F/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, otp: winter biochemist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1859331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailyn_moreau/pseuds/ailyn_moreau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma is given an unexpected mission to complete, and Bucky goes along to make sure things go smoothly.  When things go horribly wrong, will they be able to make it out alive?  A follow up to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1829587">Never Did Run Smooth</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunrise, Sunset

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jadzia_Bear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadzia_Bear/gifts).



> Thanks to Jadzia_Bear for the prompt that inspired this fic: sunset. It takes place the morning after Never Did Run Smooth. Also, many thanks to snarkylittlespeedster for the beta!

The light filtered into the small apartment through wooden slats and drapes pulled to the side. Jemma could feel the warmth of the rising sun on her face, but kept her eyes shut against it, not wanting the morning to have arrived. Instead, she pulled the covers tighter over her, shifting her body closer to the man whose arm lay draped over her stomach. She was still at that moment between being asleep and awake, drifting in the blissful feeling of having Bucky wrapped around her, mind blank of all other concerns.

The moment didn’t last, however. Her phone began buzzing on the bedside table, and she groaned in disappointment at the noise rousing her from the first peaceful night’s sleep she’d had in ages, which she attributed completely to the man beside her. They hadn’t spent the entire night _sleeping_ of course, but their other activities had contributed in their own way she was quite sure. Regardless, she had half a mind to throw the phone across the room and go right back to sleep, especially when Bucky stirred next to her, clearly also woken by the phone.

She sighed and reached over to answer. “Simmons.” It was Coulson. The moment she recognized his voice she sat up straighter. Bucky gave her a questioning look, but she just put a finger to her lips and put the phone on speaker.

“There’s been a change of plans. A contact of ours has managed to get the blueprints to a HYDRA facility in Budapest. I need you to be on the 10:30 to Munich to pick up the thumb drive. You’re to meet the contact in the dining car at noon. You’ll have a cup of tea in front of you and they will sit across from you and ask if you dropped your copy of the paper. Respond in the affirmative and take it from them. Get off the train in Munich and we’ll arrange to get you back home from there. Any questions?”

“No sir. That sounds pretty straightforward,” she said, eyes closed as she leaned back against the headboard. She could already feel herself getting a bit nervous at the idea of an impromptu pick-up. It _sounded_ easy enough, but it seemed like these things rarely went that way. The last-minute nature of it was what worried her the most; that was never a good sign in her experience. Still, she couldn’t exactly say no, could she?

“Good. We’re spread a little thin at the moment, so you won’t have any backup if something goes wrong.” Coulson was quiet for a moment, and she could positively hear his regret at having to put her in this position. “I know this isn’t exactly what you signed up for, Simmons, and if you want to back out…”

“I understand. It’s fine, sir. I’ll pick up the tickets shortly.”

“Thank you, Simmons. I’ll be in touch.”

The moment the call ended Bucky was looking at her darkly. “I don’t like this,” he said grimly. “And I especially don’t like the fact he was going to send you in without backup.”

“I take it you weren’t supposed to be anywhere near here at the moment,” she said dryly, already figuring that was the case. If he was he wouldn’t have shown up all bruised and bloodied like he had the night before.

“No. My mission didn’t exactly go as planned. But that means I can go with you now.”

She had to admit, even if the task was as straightforward as Coulson made it sound, she _would_ feel a lot better knowing Bucky had her back. Still, if the contact was expecting her to be alone she didn’t want to compromise the mission before it had begun. “Do you think you’d be recognized? If they’re expecting me alone…”

“I’m pretty sure I know how to blend in by now, Jemma. Besides, not even Coulson knows I’ll be there. I’ll just be another passenger on the train, one who just happens to be getting lunch at noon.”

She gave him a smile, the anxious knot that had formed around her heart loosening at the knowledge he’d be there. She leaned over and gave him a kiss. “Good. And when this is all over maybe we can do a little sightseeing together. I hear Munich is beautiful this time of year.”

“More time with you? I won’t complain,” he said, running his fingertips down her curves. She couldn’t help a small shiver and he wrapped his arm around her to pull her closer to him. “Speaking of which, how early is it?”

“Six-thirty,” she said mournfully. Far earlier than she’d been hoping to be up, that was for sure. Bucky, on the other hand, seemed pleased at the answer if the glint in his eye was anything to go by.

“Plenty of time before we have to be up then,” he murmured, starting to trace kisses from her jawline down her neck. A little groan of appreciation escaped her. If being up this early meant _this_ is how she got to start her day, who was she to complain?

~*~

Jemma felt incredibly awkward and exposed sitting on the train, trying to sip her tea as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be doing. She’d gotten better about these things, about hiding her nerves, about stuttering over lies since SHIELD’s fall. She hadn’t had a choice really; adapt or die. It didn’t change how she _felt_ however. She would swear the entire train could hear her heart beating faster than it should. She wanted to look over at Bucky for reassurance, but that would be a dead giveaway that she wasn’t alone. Instead she glanced out the window, pretending to be interested in the countryside. It was lovely, but she wasn’t really focused on it.

It was just a minute past noon when someone slid into the seat across from her. She turned her head to look at them. A rather nondescript man with dark, curly hair and blue eyes. The only thing that made him noticeable at all was how his nose was slightly bent, as if it had been broken and not reset properly in time. He slid a folded up paper toward her. “I believe you dropped this.”

Jemma gave him a tiny smile and nod that was meant to come off as grateful. “Thank you.” He returned the nod and left her the paper, sliding out of the booth to leave her alone. Once he’d gone from the car she breathed a sigh of relief and reached to pull the paper back toward her.

The moment she pressed her palm to it, however, she felt a sharp prick that made her gasp and pull her hand back immediately. She turned her palm over to reveal a dot of blood welling up. Her stomach turned. This was _not_ good. She swallowed hard and pulled the paper toward her by the edge this time, carefully unwrapping it to find not the promised thumb drive but instead a needle attached to a tiny, almost flat container which was now empty.

Before she could even process it all Bucky was sliding into the bench next to her. “What’s wrong, I thought I heard you-” It was only then that he looked down at the contents of the table. She would have sworn he lost some of his color as he pulled her bleeding hand toward him. “ _Shit._ Jemma…” He looked up at her. “How are you feeling? Anything out of the ordinary? Tiredness, pain, anything?”

The questions came rapidly, and were enough to jerk her out of the shock that she’d been in. “N...No, I don’t feel like anything’s wrong. But...something _has_ to be, right?” She looked up at him, wide-eyed and scared. She had no idea what had been in the syringe, nor did she have any way of finding out at the moment. If she had some equipment she could find out easily, but she had next to nothing with her.

He swallowed hard, not answering her question, but he didn’t need to. They both knew the answer to that. After a brief moment he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, but when he pulled back his demeanor had changed. It was cold, deadly, focused. He was falling back on his training, slipping into the mode he used for his missions. It was something close to what he used to be as the Winter Soldier, but there was something in his eyes, a sense of humanity, that differentiated the two. The Winter Soldier had been little more than a killing machine, this was Bucky steeling himself for work that needed to be done. “Go to the bathroom at the end of the car and lock yourself in. _Now._ I’ll be back for you in a couple minutes.”

And then he was gone as quickly as he’d been at her side. She didn’t hesitate, wrapping the syringe back up in the paper and fleeing to the bathroom, locking herself in the small compartment. Setting the paper aside, she once again hesitantly turned her palm up to look at what had been done. The wound was tiny, hardly larger than a pinprick, but she could also tell it went fairly deep. It hadn’t stopped bleeding yet, either, which was unusual. Did it have an anticoagulant agent? That wouldn’t be good. Then again, what _would_ be good in this instance? She was sitting here, alone, injected with an unknown substance and _there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it!_

She forced herself to breathe. She couldn’t let herself panic, not here, not now. Bucky would be back soon and they would figure it out. Maybe he’d be able to get some answers from the man he’d no doubt run off to track down before he could escape. She didn’t want to think about just _what_ Bucky was going to do to the man to get those answers, but that was why she was here and he was there. She wasn’t ignorant of what he was capable of, especially when it came to the people he cared about, but sometimes out of sight, out of mind was the best adage to follow. Not a sentiment she ever thought she’d subscribe to, but the years since SHIELD’s initial fall had changed them all.

She went to the sink and began to scrub her palm. It probably wouldn’t do anything, but at least then she wouldn’t get blood on anything and it gave her something to focus on in the meantime. Not that the distraction lasted long, there was only so much scrubbing she could do, and no matter how hard she tried it just wouldn’t stop _bleeding_. Definitely an anticoagulant then, probably to make sure whatever it was would move through her bloodstream unimpeded. Brilliant.

It wasn’t a fast acting poison; if it was she would have felt the effects of that by now. Nor was it any sort of sleeping agent for the same reason. So something that needed to disperse through the bloodstream, but not kill her right away. Her head was spinning from the possibilities. She needed her lab, or even just a scanner, or _anything_ that could help her figure out what had been done to her so she could stop it...but all of that was out of reach.

She grabbed a couple paper towels and pressed them to her palm, hoping against hope maybe the extra pressure would help. She didn’t know what else to do until Bucky got back, and she fervently hoped that would be soon. She felt helpless, exposed, scared and she didn’t like any of it. He’d know what to do. He had to.

She started at the sound of a knock on the door. She pulled her gun from her holster as quietly as she could, holding it ready as she replied, “It’s occupied.”

There was a brief pause and then the banging started. She could see the door vibrating with each hit, each impact shaking it looser and looser. The locks on these things weren’t meant to stand up to such force, and she wouldn’t have long before whoever it was broke in. She swallowed hard, lifting the gun up to point at the door, breathing to make sure her hands stayed steady. She hated using guns, she hated the idea of having to kill someone, but if they left her no choice she wouldn’t go down without a fight. Bucky had insisted on training her for a reason, and this very situation was a prime example of it. She estimated she had about one more solid hit before the door would fall in, and she braced herself for what was to come next.

As it turned out she didn’t need to. She heard groans and gunshots in the hallway, but neither lasted long. Her heart was practically pounding out of her chest when she heard a familiar voice say, “Jemma, are you okay in there?”

She let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and practically flung herself into Bucky’s arms the moment she had the door open. He held her close for a moment before stepping back to look her over. Seemingly satisfied with what he saw, he took her hand and started leading her quickly past the bodies now scattered across the train car. She wanted to ask him what had happened, if he’d found anything out, but she knew better than to question him when it was clear they were running from something. Questions could wait until they were somewhere safer, for now it was obvious the priority was to get out of there.

They ran through the rest of the train, which fortunately only consisted of a couple of baggage cars, until they reached the end. Jemma’s eyes widened as she realized what he was planning for them to do. “You want me to jump off a moving train?”

“Would you rather stay here and find out if more people want to shoot at us?”

She just looked at him for a moment, then back out at the rapidly moving landscape before them. “So, how do I do this without breaking a leg?”

“Try to stay perpendicular to the ground when you jump, roll once you hit, and hope for the best. Come on.”

Bucky, of course, was able to execute the move perfectly, rolling on the ground for only a moment when he landed before hopping right back up. Jemma, on the other hand, was not so lucky. She didn’t know how to twist her body to land where it would do the least damage, and so she ended up hitting her ankle and hip harder on the ground than she should have. Her arms took a secondary hit, fortunately not breaking, but getting rather scraped up nonetheless.

It took her a moment to get over having the wind knocked out of her from the impact. Once she was able to breath again she tried to stand, only to crumple back down to the ground with a small cry as she tried to put weight on her apparently injured ankle. Perfect. Now she’d just gone and made things worse. She shifted to gently examine the ankle, making sure it wasn’t broken. It wasn’t, but she’d done a good job spraining it, that was for sure.

Bucky was at her side in a moment, helping her limp away from the tracks. “How bad?”

“Not good, but not broken. Walking’s going to be difficult,” she admitted guiltily. She didn’t want to slow them down, but she couldn’t do anything about it now.

He swore under his breath, but helped her up, looping an arm around her waist to help support her. He started to look around as they moved away from the tracks, toward foliage that could hide them from view. “There’s an old safehouse a few kilometers from here. We could hide out there until we’re able to reach Coulson to get backup. If the lab’s still intact you might even be able to start figuring out what they did to you. How’s your hand?”

She turned her palm up to find that the bleeding still hadn’t stopped. She was lucky it was such a tiny wound or she’d be in real trouble by this point. “Same as before. You haven’t seen anything like it before, have you?”

“Not that I remember.” It was possible that he could have seen something like it before and just not remember, which would explain the slightly pinched look his face took when he said that. His rehabilitation hadn’t been perfect; there were still memory gaps, things that seemed out of focus or out of reach. “Let’s focus on getting where we need to go without being followed first, then we’ll see what we can do with what we find."

~*~

It took longer than it might normally have for the two of them to make the trek to the abandoned building, injured as they were. Bucky might be better at fighting his way through injuries than Jemma, but the ones he’d sustained on his prior mission were still plaguing him somewhat. They didn’t seem to have been followed, however, which honestly both relieved and worried Jemma. It was great that they weren’t being shot at, of course, but she found it difficult to believe if someone was after them, after her, they’d be so easily thrown off by them simply jumping off the train. It was a predictable move. So where were they?

Bucky seemed worried by that too, but he seemed more concerned with making sure the safehouse they’d found themselves in was actually clear. It wasn’t an old SHIELD base, or even an old HYDRA one, but in fact an old KGB hideout. It was relatively small, but had once been secure enough. As long as it wasn’t totally rundown they should be able to hide there until Coulson could send someone to extract them.

The call to Coulson had gone about as well as expected. He’d been shocked to find out both what happened and that Bucky was there. There was a bit of a question in his voice at that revelation, but fortunately he didn’t press the issue, seemingly relieved that at least Jemma wasn’t stuck by herself. There wasn’t much they could do to conceal the call, so they had made it before they got to the base and ditched the phone along the way. If they could just hold out a few hours someone would be able to get to them, but a few hours was an eternity. Anything could happen in that amount of time, and most of it wouldn’t be good.

The base was small, but it did have a little lab, which is where they found themselves for the moment. Jemma had been limping about the room looking for something, anything that would allow her to get a closer look at her hand, but just pushed the latest box of broken material aside in frustration, dropping her head into her non-bleeding hand. “Dammit. There’s nothing. I shouldn’t have expected any less, but I’d hoped that maybe…”

Bucky seemed equally frustrated and restless. All they had was time on their hands, all they could do was wait in anticipation of either a rescue or an attack. He never did well with that sort thing, and there were a couple of dents in the walls around them to prove it. “They should have been here by now,” he practically growled. “I don’t like staying put for this long when we know they’re out there.”

“Well, what else are we supposed to do? If we leave then we won’t get extracted!”

“But the longer we stay the more likely it is that whoever did this to you is going to find us!”

“I don’t have an answer to that, Bucky. I wish I did, but I don’t. I still don’t even know what they did except that the damn thing _won’t stop bleeding!_ ” She closed her eyes and forced herself to take a long breath, trying to calm herself a bit. She couldn’t get worked up over things she couldn’t change, no matter how anxious she was. It wasn’t his fault; she wouldn’t have made it this far without him. She looked up at him apologetically. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to…”

He wilted a little as well, coming close and pulling her into his arms. “I know, I know. We’ll give them another hour, but then we have to move. We can’t stay still like this.”

She sighed into his chest. “I know. I know, you’re right, we can’t.”

“I’m going to check the perimeter once more, just to be sure. I won’t be long.”

“Alright,” she said, reluctant to let him go. It was just a little easier to deal with the situation with him so close. It would only be a couple minutes. She could handle that.

He dropped one last kiss on the top of her head before leaving the room. Hardly a minute later she heard a loud thud and metal clang. “Bucky!” She yelled, limping her way over to the lab door to go check on him, only to find it sealed shut. She slammed her uninjured hand against it, starting to feel her pulse race as panic began to rise within her. _“Bucky!”_

“Jemma!” His voice was muffled and faint. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, but I think I’m stuck in here.”

She couldn’t exactly hear him swearing, but she knew that’s what was happening. “Something must’ve triggered a lockdown. I’ll-”

His voice cut off and she heard footsteps. Lots of them...and they were too loud for his side of the divide. It couldn’t be their backup, that would be minimal at best, which left only one possibility…

“Jemma, hide. _Do it, now!_ ” His voice had grown frantic, and she could hear him pounding on the divide, trying to find a way to break through. She didn’t want to leave her spot, lose the sound of his voice, but they were getting closer by the second. She made her way to a small corner, back behind an old desk and empty file cabinet. It wouldn’t fool them for long, but knowing Bucky she wouldn’t need long.

Or at least she thought that until she heard the explosion on the other side of the divide. Her hands clasped over her mouth, trying to keep from making any noise, but it was too late. It hadn’t been a loud cry, but it was enough to give away her position. She pulled out the gun, steeling herself for what she’d have to do. She had to get to Bucky, she couldn’t leave him there, he couldn’t be…

She peaked up over the file cabinet, trying to focus her fear and rage into targeting the bastards who were doing this. Bucky’s training had been thorough; she dropped two before they began to fire, but she ran out of bullets long before she could make any real progress. She was easily overpowered and taken roughly from the facility, screaming for Bucky the whole way. The last thing she saw was the sun setting over the German countryside before the hood went over head.

**Author's Note:**

> I have another prompt in my queue which I intend to fill as a way of rounding out what's quickly turned into a trilogy of sorts. So fear not, another fic will be coming soon.


End file.
